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Reviews have generally been quite positive, and if they can use their market share from Windows and XBox and create some kind of easy porting method it might become at least a moderate success. It will probably take a couple of years before the platform can actually compete though, if that ever happens.

Reviews have generally been quite positive, and if they can use their market share from Windows and XBox and create some kind of easy porting method it might become at least a moderate success. It will probably take a couple of years before the platform can actually compete though, if that ever happens.

People will say anything for enough money.

And that is exactly what's happening. Windows Mobile marketshare is decreasing. While that may largely be due to people defecting from WM6.5 and earlier, they sure as heck arent picking up WP7 - and WP7 sales cant make up for that slip in marketshare (assuming it is actually the case, that WM6.5 defections are the issue). It explains why Microsoft REFUSES to release end user/activation numbers and started with citing oem sales to stores... and when that number turned abysmal, they started citing number of l

I'm going to have to agree. I don't know anyone who is planning to get (or is excited about the possibility of getting) a windows phone. Add the fact that many (most) companies are now supporting iOS and Android on their corporate networks, and what you come up with is a market already filled with devices superior to anything Microsoft could offer. No one is going to willingly downgrade to a windows phone.

That's the problem I see with WP7 getting more marketshare. MS is trying to appeal only to consumers who are their current customers. It's not trying to get more general consumers. Is Xbox Live integration a good feature? Yes, if you already have it. If you're talking about my grandmother who has doesn't care for a "YBox" or "PlaySituation" or a "Whey", it's no good for her.

Just for the record, I upgraded from iPhone to WP7 this year. A little by accident. Developing for mobile I have to keep tabs on what goes on, so I have an iPhone 3GS, a Galaxy Tab and I got a WP7 phone just before Christmas. I was not expecting it to be my main phone, which at the time was the iPhone, so I just got the cheapest they had, the LG.

I was immediately impressed with the development environment which is at least a generation ahead of Android and even more ahead of Apple (gawd I hate Objective-C). I doodled some apps. Worked on it for a while. I found my self grabbing the WP7 phone more and more and suddenly I found I preferred it over the other two.

Does the phone have shortcomings? Fewer now that the first update is out, but sure, it does. It is still a significantly improved user experience over iOS though. Given what we saw at Mix, the Microsoft lead over Apple in phone usability will take another significant leap forward. Honestly, nobody innovates on the phone like Microsoft at the moment. It took a while to get started, but as some of the other Microsoft teams, the WP7 team is world class with a great product.

Sadly I think a number of developers, particularly of the ilk that reads/. are making judgements mostly on their own superstition. Microsoft of 2011 is not Microsoft of 1999. There is a significant improvement, and many Microsoft products, like C# - which has jumped far, far ahead of Java now,.NET MVC and others, are really quite good. In my current job I integrate JBoss and Microsoft solutions. Working in Eclipse on Linux is a huge step backwards compared to VS2010 on Windows.

Before concluding I am a MS fanboi, I have been working almost exclusively in Java since early 1997 and was part of one of the very early companies to make serious money on a commercial Java product. In the beginning we had to carefully wrap our Java stuff in C front-ends to make sure our customers didn't notice it was Java. If they had, at the time they would have rejected it, since everybody "knew" at the time that Java was too slow to use for anything real.

Bottom line: Apple has been by far the superior investment over the past decade. Next: Revenue

Bottom line: Apple's fiscal year 2010 revenue edged Microsoft's, $65.2 billion to $62.5 billion. (Note: Microsoft's fiscal year is July through June, and Apple's is October through September.)

Bottom line: While Microsoft still generates more profits than Apple, the gap has narrowed significantly. If current trends continued -- a big if -- Apple would likely top Microsoft's profits in a couple of years.

My Bottom Line: Microsoft is still more profitable therefore the value of the company is higher but less desirable to buy in to because it has so many shareholders. Apple went through a growth spurt because of its mobile device sales and if you had stocks back then whoopty doo for you. On the flipside the future hold uncertainty since everyone keeps pointing out that Microsoft is expected to beat Apple in marketshare and Android has already started killing it in the market.

The main thing that numbers (or at least the people trumpeting them) exaggerate is their own importance. That is to say, for example, "X OS outsells Y OS on Z type of platform, so X wins!" To which the retort is, "Well, Y OS earns ten times the revenue, so Y OS wins!"

People like to use car analogies (Yugo vs. BMW), but I've recently decided that, at least in the mobile market (I know, off topic, but related), a better parallel would be a comparison with restaurants. These days, anyone but the most iro

Overpriced compared to what? Compared to Microsoft? Apple has year-over-year EPS growth numbers that are over twice as high as Microsoft's. Stock valuation is based on expected future earnings growth. If you said that Google or Amazon are way over-priced compared to Microsoft you would have a legitimate argument since their earnings growth thus far has only matched Microsoft yet their P/E ratio paints a different picture. Let's focus on facts instead of vague hand-waving.

MSFT has plateaued since the early 00s because people have seen it really can't innovate beyond OS/Office line. The whole Xbox division has lost money to gain it's prominent position this generation of consoles. The Zune was mostly meh. It came out early in tablets/smartphones but despite that couldn't make anything people needed to have.

The day Steve Ballmer steps down is the day that stock will start gaining again. Even better if they get a CEO with an iota of division and the power/desire to kill the bureacracy that is stifling that company. I wonder how much of their workforce are just leeches who have a cushy job that produces little/no value to the company.

The lead people at MS are killing the company. I have no doubt about it.

Have you ever read the e-mails from Bill Gates to his top guys at MS? The e-mails where he describes his intent to use windows movie maker and ended up in an hours-long fiasco of installing all kinds of crap and encountering dysfunction along the entire path? If not it is worth googling.

I had this EXACT same experience, except I wasn't a former owner writing e-mails... I was just a guy laughing at how ridiculous it was.

Opera 11.1, Chrome 10, Safari 5, and IE8 all work fine... Firefox 4, and Aurora, both screw up... but in the case of a layout malfunction, they all have an "Inspect Element" (for Opera or Chrome, for IE it's Developer Tools, or View Source for Firefox/Safari) where you would be able to get the link from. Just a suggestion for the future.

You were modded up as insightful, but for many straight quarters, Apple has been performing very well. Their stock price reflects real world, historical performance. If you happen to know that they are headed for an earnings drop, please tell us how you know.

The stock price reflects future growth potential. The price of a utility stock such as AT&T reflects real work historical performance. It has a P/E of 9.06, Apple's is 18.85, meaning the market expects Apple to more than double its earnings in the future.

Considering that they released the iPad 9 months ago, in one of the most successful product launches in history, and were able to continue to grow their profits in a global economic downturn, and continue to grow their smartphone user base, and continue to increase their computer market share, I think that's not too far away.

Despite many claims that they'd be a flash in the pan, every year they have continued to grow.

At P/E of 18.9 I would have to disagree with you. Unless Apple's earnings were to collapse dramatically in the short term, 18.9 is a fairly modest multiple for a tech company showing strong growth and ownership of multiple market segments. Yes, Android is coming on strong but that negative is already priced in, otherwise Apple's P/E would be somewhere in the mid 20's. Note: I am in no way an Apple groupie. I detest Apple's corporate culture and getting anywhere near an Apple product makes me ill. But a fair

Price is only one component. Berkshire Hathaway shares have a high price, but there is a strong case for them being a good value. Apple PER less cash is ridiculously low for a company that's growing profits this fast and has so much more market share to gain in markets that are themselves growing quickly.

They will (mostly) be buying it because they don't know any better, or that it is "The OS" that is present on the phone they were sold.

Windows Mobile has been and always will be a trash OS. Glitchy, crashy, unreliable, clunky, odd..... I have multiple years of experience and wished for something akin to iOS or Android the whole time.

---I fear the only way they can predict WM will outrun iOS is because of some form of anti-trust action in business producing exclusivity and limitation of OS choices. This is par for the course for microsoft and its business model; when the consumer doesn't like it, buy up, control, and limit their choices. In the end, they know the consumer pays for MS crap rather than not have technology.

Hey, perhaps WM never worked for you, as you expectations were different. I switched from mi HTC wizard to an iPhone, and I gained lots of applications, but I started losing calls. As a phone WM worked well and with a fairly powerful browser it gave me what I needed, and its processor speed was less than 200Mhz. I never recovered from that. And eventually has to switch to a 1Ghz android. Now... As time passes I realize that for the actual processing power, WM5 worked quite well.

This is the most ridiculous claim of TFA.They only provide 2 data point : 2010 and 2011, where Microsoft has clearly a fraction of Apple marketshare, but is showing some slight improvement. And out of this, the analyst predict the value of 2012 and 2015 and think that by then Microsoft will dominate the market ?!?

The prediction is based on Nokia choosing to go with Windows 7. For some reason the analysts think that a) Nokia is going to put Windows 7 on all their phones and b) people will actually buy those phones in the same numbers that they buy current Nokia phones. If those two miracles were to happen then Windows 7 would top Apple's phone market share.

I own an iPhone, but frankly I'm rooting for WP7 all the way. While there's a lot of excitement about developing for iOS *devices*, I don't see much excitement about iOS as a *development platform*. Closed app store, OS X development only, clunky programming language - no reason to rehash the whole list - you read slashdot. This is the one thing MS brings to the show - they know how to make software that appeals to developers, and that's what I expect out of WP7. Some excitement around it as a developme

Except that nearly that whole list describes how Microsoft plans to handle developers for WM7. Closed App Store, Windows only development (granted, given Windows ubiquity, not a huge issue, but conceptually the same), probably VS only development... Only the clunky language is missing and there are ways around that. Not to mention that while ObjectiveC may be somewhat clunky, most people admit that Cocoa is pretty spiffy overall once they play with it a bit. It abstracts away most, if certainly not all,

For example: $1k invested in 2000, AAPL vs. MSFT. What about 1985? 1990? 1995? Hindsight is 20/20, as the saying goes. Apple has had success with some of it's more recent Jobs products. But nobody KNEW that would happen before-hand. Apple has gone up and down; has Microsoft done the same? Was MSFT less of a gamble with a smaller potential benefit, whereas Apple was a gamble with large potential benefit? (I don't know, I'm only asking questions that could color the interpretation of these "infallible numbers"....)

Or, how about this one: revenue vs. profits. MSFT is still beating Apple in profit. So... which is more important? Total stock price? Profit? Total revenue?...

Or how about diversity of revenue? If suddenly iPhones and iPads went out of style, where would Apple be? If Windows phones went out of style, where would Windows be?

Interpretation of numbers is a big deal in comparing two companies... and there's a lot more to a company vs. company debate than revenue, profit, stock price/market cap, and phone sales... especially when products come and go as trends, and when one company has already shown that it falls apart without a certain CEO.

Potential profits for the next few years determine stock price. Apple's profits are multiplying (x7 since 2006 apparently). Microsoft's are going up, so far, a little bit.

As for diversity, Microsoft makes most of their money from two closely linked software products - Office and Windows. Both of which are losing market share. Apple makes most of their money from phones, tablets, music players, computers, apps and music, all but one of which is growing, fast. Which of those is more diverse?

Doh. I just had a post and accidentally clicked a link in the preview. Sigh.

Here are some charts. [asymco.com] Most of Apple's profit comes from the iPhone of late. Without it, it looks like its profits would have been much lower.

Here's a slightly dated Windows one. [businessinsider.com] Office and Windows, you're right. On the whole, I'd say iOS products are more of a luxury item (and have more competition?) than Windows and Office.

Of course, if either one stagnates, then either company is in trouble:) Not sure how Windows 7 has im

Windows monopoly? Is that something like Ford motor company having a monopoly on Fords?

No, but it might be if there were technical issues that forced each brand of car to use different and incompatible kinds of gasoline, and all the gas stations in the country only sold Ford-compatible fuel.

Everyone forgets about Kinect. Which outsold iPhones, iPads, iPod touchs, combined. It went on to break the Guiness World Record for the fastest selling consumer gadget of all time. Mod me down as a troll or whatever but: Thats Pretty Fucking Impressive. Frankly Apple's wonderously profitable, despite having nothing like the market share of other players, that is all.

We're all still so besotted with shiny iThings and Microsoft bashing groupthink that we've kind of ignored this revolutionary human computer interface. Things being done with Kinect by hackers are seriously cool and ultimately this is the technology that is going to be the technology that the forthcoming consumer robot revolution will see the world with.

Microsoft is hardly old news, it just isn't a news media and Wall Street darling like Apple. Microsofts been sinking billions into user interface R&D over the last little while, too much criticism, yet they now have something pretty revolutionary and record breaking to show for it.

As soon as they stick Kinect in a smartphone they'll have a hit on their hands.

""It's a matter of opinion which company makes the better operating system or is likely to grow its smartphone market share. But numbers don't lie â" or exaggerate."

Yeah numbers don't lie - Apple still has a niche desktop install base, and a smaller market share of mobiles than Android, and growth has plateaued in each area. Tablets are where Apple will inevitably dethroned, but I'd bet they hold out longer since their lead in this area is bigger. Historically Apple having any kind of lead has been a temporary thing.

Neither the Kinect nor XBox will cause investors to love Microsoft. Just as well there are still loyal fanbois who have blinkers on to what is going on outside of Redmond. The rest of us see Microsoft in a similar way to IBM; big, bloated, and not going away anytime soon, but not exciting either - it

The Kinect is the best selling consumer gadget of all time, but it's closely followed by the original iPad, the previous record holder. And after it's initial burst the Kinect slowed off. It looks like the Microsoft shipped 10 million Kinects to retailers in it's first four months, selling at $150 apiece. Note that those are shipped to retailers, not necessary sold.

In the last three months of 2010 Apple sold 7.33 million iPads, 16.24 million iPhones a

The number of Kinect's sold by MS is definitely an impressive feat, but how profitable will it be for MS on the whole? When Apple sells an iDevice they also get software and media sales via iTunes. There is the so-called "halo-effect" of iDevice owners buying Macs (evidence by Macs growing sales while PCs are shrinking). Owners of iDevices tend to be repeat customers buying replacement iDevices each time. Are people going to repeatedly buy the Kinect? Arguably Kinect is driving some additional software

This is perhaps anecdotal but truthfully, the mp3 market is changing rapidly thanks to smart phones. I gave my iPod away a long time ago and haven't looked back as my Android phone(s) have been capable of doing a lot more. With the rise of smartphones the decline of mp3 devices will increase until it goes the way of the sony walkman. That I think leads into the "temporary" part of the Apple dominance thing.

The iPod was and remains a great device but it's usefulness is going to be short lived if current mark

From my own experience I know of 6 or 7 people who now have iPhones whereas before they had simple candybar phones and are enjoying the new experience, and crucially they don;t need anything more than the Apple experience offers because Apple are extremely good at catering to the "average user". An Android phone doesn't offer these people any more than an iPhone does because the extra benefits of the Android platform just don't fit into th

The question of how we define "temporary" is still very germane though. Arguably iPod will have dominated the MP3 player market from the introduction of the device until the effective death of the market. That's not really temporary by any reasonable definition. Especially when you consider that Apple themselves introduced the device which will eventually "kill" the iPod, the iPhone. Foreseeing the likely death of their own market (something like iPhone was bound to come along sooner or later), they ha

I've been a lifelong Windows user (happy about it too), and up until recently never thought that would change. But, as I was researching my options for a new laptop, I found I couldn't get what I wanted (256GB SSD, 13", ultra light, long battery) for any cheaper buying Dell/HP/whatever so I bought a refurb Macbook. I'm a.NET developer though, and I never never never never never would have even thought of buying one without Parallels so that I could run Windows. I'm not sure that my anecdote is represent

0.1% of the Slashdot crowd, maybe. But you delude yourself if you believe that plenty of folks aren't happy with Windows. Now, yes - the specs I wanted for my laptop aren't super-typical for someone in the market for a Dell, but so what? My point still stands - I highly doubt that Apple is killing Microsoft in any way right now in the markets where they actually compete. People aren't choosing Apple over some Microsoft alternative - that was the battle from 2 decades ago. The more interesting compariso

I know you're trying to be cute, but I think that's part of the problem. I run a Linux server at work for secure file transfers and we have a legacy Apache box serving PHP pages for an old website. We run Cygwin on many of our Windows servers. But the truth is - and I recognize I'm not in great company here at Slashdot - that Windows is plenty fine for most in the consumer space. Windows 7 is the best OS MS has ever released, and the adoption rate blew away OSX's total market share in a matter of months

Actually you are missing the point. Microsoft dominates the desktop and will continue to do so. However, people aren't buying desktops as they used to. They use their smartphone and iPads for tasks they formerly bought desktops for. With console use on the rise as well you can expected to see the number of consumer desktops stabilize or grow very slowly (accounting for growth in use in the developing world). This is not a situation investors will want to be in. (also written from OS X; I agree with your poi

I have an iPad as well. The first thing you do when you open the box is plug it into your computer and wait. We're not in a post-PC world yet by a long shot, but I'll agree with you that MS got caught with their pants down when it comes to tablets and phones. But if history is any indication, they'll catch up, and I expect they'll do it quickly.

You've described my background and thought process for a recent purchase almost exactly - except that I've bought a new Macbook Air. I still think it's overpriced for what it does, but then no-one else offers all the features and benefits in one package, so I guess they have a reason to charge as much as they do. And I've grown to like it a lot - more so than a tablet (another recent purchase), in fact. It has completely replaced my Win7 netbook, and I don't notice any loss of functionality

I mean, these are the guys selling toxic mortgage backed securities as "AAA" while simultaneously shorting the securities as junk
Wall Str is where one number can come out, and suddenly a company is worth 10, or even 20% less then yesterday
I could go on, but this blind faith in the "market" - which is really a relatively small # of conservative white guys who all live suburbs that are the same across the country - this faith is silly.

I didn't say that you couldn't buy them bare, just that it was fairly unusual. I doubt it makes up the difference between Windows and Linux ($6.3bn vs $2.5bn, 1.5mn units vs 450k units, according to IDC in Q4 2010.)

Revenue is pointless to look at, MS charges way more and Centos is on many servers. Units is more interesting, and I now am wondering where they get their units figures. Not saying anything is wrong with them, just 3 times the units does not match what I see on a day to day basis in server rooms. Maybe other parts of the earth are not like my little area.

How many real players buy Dell or HP? Seriously? Facebook, Google, Rackspace? they all have custom OEM ones, (and I think Amazon does as well). So those shipments don't count in the numbers your quoting.. Seriously, with VM's, windows is going out quickly.. When you can turn up a new server in 5 minutes, you can seriously start isolating services. ie, separate print server, file server, calendar server, etc. Except with Windows, your paying out the nose in licensing and CAL's.. (why do people always forg

This statistic doesn't include what I do: buy a server that happens to come with Windows installed, wipe it, and put Linux on it. Does anybody else do that?

No, I think you're pretty much unique. Most people on slashdot have barely heard of Linux, never mind actually installed it on a server. We're pretty big on Windows 95 for production environments, although some of the hardcore gamers use Mac OS9.

But that's like analyzing the breathable-gas market and claiming tobacco smoke is a more valuable breathable gas than fresh air because one has tens of billions of dollars of annual revenue, while the other has ~$0.

He's as out of touch and greedy as he ever was only this time instead of storming out in a blaze of publicity he's signed up to getting an authorised biography done.

Lol, wut? Out of touch? Really? Did you happen to notice the iPod? Apple cornered the marked on portable, digital music players and everyone else had to play catch up. Which none of them ever managed to do.

Have you seen the iPad? Again, Apple has cornered the market and yet again the competitors are racing to catch up with Apple having already launched its 2nd gen iPad.

From the other side he'll be madly laughing to himself as the seeds of his own arrogance caused Apple to miss the boat on getting an affordable OS X out to the masses and someone carries the blame again.

Affordable OS X? Go to any computer store that sells Apple products. The disk for OS X costs about $30. 30 DOLLARS. How farking much does cheapest hobbled version of Windows 7 cost?

But according to Apple, you also have to own/buy apple hardware to install that $30 OS on.

Considering Apple went out of their way to stop people from installing OSX on netbooks, the AC has a point. If Apple had to support OSX on every type of Intel and AMD platform I am not so sure their "smooth OS experience" would be there across the board.

"Out of their way" being a non-encrypted install DVD with no serial numbers and no activation system with a single text file that says "please don't steal OSX" that you have to remove before burning a bootable copy on a non-apple machine.

Yeah, the so-called experts just moved Nokia's current market share over to Windows Phone without really explaining why and declared the Windows Phone the winner. It is not guaranteed that the MS/Nokia partnership will generate a lot of sales. The first phone will be years away and I don't expect Apple or Android to sit and wait for Windows Phone to catch up. MS and Nokia both have a lot of work ahead. Execution has not been a strong point of MS since Ballmer took charge.